How to Deliver a Best Man Speech Course | Why Do We Get Nervous When Speaking in Public? | [VIDEO 3 of 30]
“There are only two types of speakers in the world. 1. The nervous and 2. Liars.” – Mark Twain
So I mentioned in the introduction about my first speech. How my heart was racing. How I couldn’t concentrate. And I was shaking so badly that I could barely speak.
What was happening was that my body was preparing itself for something called ‘fight or flight’. You may have heard of this before, it’s what happens when we get super stressed. In these circumstances, large amounts of hormones, including adrenaline, are released into our nervous systems. Our heart rate increases and our muscles become tense.
Now what’s happening here is that your body is preparing itself. It’s giving you a temporary strength, either to fight, or run pretty damn fast which as we’ll go on to see dates back to our ancestral past. Millions of years ago, man lived in a world filled with a constant risk of being killed, either by predators or starvation. A way to keep safe and avoid threats was to be part of a group – the old saying ‘safety in numbers’
At that time, being isolated from a group, maybe by saying something wrong, or standing out in some way, might result in being exiled from the group, and that would mean a much higher likelihood of death. Now, of course, you’re not going to die when you get up to give your speech, but if you do feel nervous, you should know that it’s a natural evolutionary reaction to fear.
